


we'll burn that bridge when we get there (and salvage what's left)

by deltacrow



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: HostageShipping if you squint i think, community: ygoanonmeme 2015, ygoanon fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 06:49:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3560138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deltacrow/pseuds/deltacrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill:<br/>"Reira asks Shun if he's a hobo. Shun reacts as expected, and both he and Reiji have to explain to Reira that no, he is not."</p>
            </blockquote>





	we'll burn that bridge when we get there (and salvage what's left)

**Author's Note:**

> from here: http://ygoanonmeme.dreamwidth.org/2887.html?thread=54855#cmt54855
> 
> My initial reply:  
> "Im writing this and it hurts me more than I care to admit. Choo choo, motherfucker, all aboard the Weeb-Trash Feelings Express, headed straight for Trainwreck Central, no stops along the way. Fasten your seatbelts, folks, because one of your conductors bet me $50 that I couldnt get there under 2000 words, and lemme tell ya, Im about to buy myself 10 new packs of cards on his dime."
> 
> basically, i fucked up and fell into "how do you explain to a seven-year-old, no matter how precocious, that the tall kid he's interacting with had watched and had to watch his home and family burn down around him" and spilled shitty feelings everywhere that included "i need to see Reiji act like a brother and not an android" and "shun should have experience with children".
> 
> so. that clusterfuck'd into this. enjoy.

Shun has no idea why he volunteers to spend time with this kid.

 

Well, that’s a lie: he spends time with this kid because Shun can point to the small, hooded figure and explain that no, he’s doing a favor for _Akaba Reiji_ , he can’t go to class. Classes that he hasn’t attended in three years, classes that he’s not sure he’d be able to stay awake in, where he’d sleep poorly and wake up to his own screaming or to someone pulling him off some poor sap that tried to shake him awake surreptitiously--

 

Watching Akaba Reira is thousands of times better than that. Besides, Reira is quiet, and seems to want for little. He’s content to play by himself, curiously avoiding his own deck and dueling in general. (Sometimes, Shun looks at Reira’s back, cards on a table on the far side of the room, and thinks, _hear, hear, kid,_ because all he can think of when he looks at Vanishing Lanius is of broken bodies and a crumbling city now.)

 

“...Are you sure that you’re not homeless?”

 

Today is a day where Reira has finally taken all of his assumptions and observations and drawn all of the _dumbest conclusions._

 

(He’s really not wrong, is the sore part.)

 

Shun leans back in his seat and stretches out his legs. “What makes you think that, anyway?”

 

Reira tugs on his cap, brim slipping down over his eyes. It reminds Shun, suddenly, of old god-kings: never allowing people to look into their eyes, under some weird idea that peasants would burn up or something. _Akaba Himika has raised emperors,_ he thinks, and then _oh my God, she_ has. The sudden image of Reiji dressed in some historical drama’s robes will never leave his mind, and he’d like to tell Ruri about it, she always loved historical shit--

 

_Oh._ Shun scowls. This is why he should really learn to stop _thinking_ so damn much.

 

Reira tugs on the corner of Shun’s coat, and sinks into himself when he turns towards Reira. “I-- I’ve never. I’ve never seen you wear anything but. But this.” He shakes his head, and clutches that bear of his tighter. “Ms. Akaba says I have a,” Reira scrunches his nose, and makes a flicking gesture with his fingers, like he’s browsing a touchpad window, “pho-to-graph-ic memory, so I can’t be wrong.”

 

“I’m not homeless.”

 

“You wear the same dirty coat and scarf all the time.”

 

“That doesn’t mean I’m homeless.”

 

“Then why don't you wash your coat?”

 

“It’s... “

 

Reiji chooses this time to make an appearance, swooping in for his few minutes of downtime in the afternoon. He has to _block time_ to see his brother, and Shun decides to take that as “he’s so busy he has to tell other people to back off” instead of “he would forget otherwise” because if there’s one thing he hasn’t lost yet, it’s the idea that family is _the_ most important thing. He’d like to think that, even with the shit happening with his bastard father, Reiji thinks the same way.

 

“What are you mocking Kurosaki about now?” (He’s still a dick, though.)

 

“I’m not making fun!” Reira protests, at odds with his normally meek behavior. “Mr. Kurosaki says he’s not homeless.”

 

Reiji nods and side-eyes Shun, before devoting his full attention to Reira. “And you don’t believe him.”

 

“Right!”

 

Reiji straightens out and lays a hand of Shun’s shoulder. Under any other circumstance, bar two, he would grab that wrist and punch its owner straight in the jaw. Now, he just grits his teeth. “That’s a shame, kid,” he says, “because I’m not.”

 

“Believable or homeless?”

 

“Both!” _Shit._ “Neither-- oh, good Christ--!” Shun stands abruptly, uncharacteristically embarrassed, and channels that embarrassment into cold indifference. “I had a home.”

Reira withdraws into his brother and Reiji looks like he’s going to strangle Shun with his ever-present scarf--- Shun supposes he left indifference and barreled into terrifying, just like his dueling--

 

“I had a home,” he says, softer this time, crouching to be at Reira’s eye level. “It was me and Ruri and my mom.” He could do this, he did part-time work in a daycare center before the war. He used to do this all the time.

 

“You’ve mentioned Ruri a lot,” Reiji notes, but he’s far away, in comparison to Reira, who looks at Shun with wide eyes and who will remember this forever and says, “tell me about them.”

  
Shun has no idea why he volunteered to do this. As if he could ever say no to children.

**Author's Note:**

> should you need to gnash teeth and weep tears, or if you are a glutton for punishment and want to prompt me with something, you can find me at www.galagavantula.tumblr.com
> 
> i will be waiting and for all that this dumb page doesn't change much, i will try to write you things and post shit here.


End file.
